House is axed – but did it cling to life for too long?

'But I was so sure that it was lupus' ... Hugh Laurie's House is hanging up his cane. Photograph: NBCUPhotobank/Rex Features

So that's it. No more House. After eight years, several charmingly self-deprecating awards show speeches, millions of dollars, one slightly ill-advised blues album, an even more slightly ill-advised advertising campaign for a male grooming product and 177 utterly identical episodes, Hugh Laurie is hanging up his cane at the end of this series.

Although the mood of the announcement was pitched somewhere between reluctant and despondent – full of lines such as "with much regret" and "the decision ... is a painful one" – it's hard not to be a little relieved at the news of House's passing. Eight years. Eight years of patients with mysterious illnesses. Eight years of initially diagnosing everything as lupus. Eight years of Hugh Laurie marching in with a grumpy look on his face seconds from the end and – based on absolutely nothing whatsoever – asserting that they're actually suffering from a disease that nobody has ever had before. Eight years of relentlessly being reminded that House is a genius. Eight years of bloody Massive Attack.

Eight years is a long time, especially when you're essentially telling the same story over and over again. That's why, in retrospect, House should have ended years ago. Back before the ratings started to wane. Back before the relationship with Cuddy started to look like a vicious self-parody. Back before that terrible episode with the dream sequence where Hugh Laurie dressed up as Charlie Sheen's character from Two And A Half Men.

Like ER, The West Wing and 24 before it, House clung on with grim determination long after its creative peak. The result is that anyone who buys a box set of House in the future will spend the last half of their viewing marathon slowly falling out of love with the show. Knowing when to quit is a valuable trait in television, and House's reluctance to bow out before everybody lost interest should be taken as a warning.

So many other shows are stubbornly labouring on past their sell-by date to an indifferent audience, and they should all be put out of their misery. For instance, would anybody really mind if nobody made another episode of CSI? Would they even notice? It's always been depressingly rote in all of its guises, but now it barely contributes a jot to anything it all. It just exists, taking up space and spinning its wheels until every last viewer turns against it.

The same goes for Grey's Anatomy. It may have been wildly successful once, but now it's so blandly by the numbers – wet-eyed emoting, bad indie music, scenes that always end with one character leaving a room – that you even sense that many of its stars are desperate for it to end.

It's not just drama that this happens to – god knows Two and a Half Men should have packed it in when Charlie Sheen derailed himself – and it's not just American shows, either. When was the last time that anybody got excited about Shameless? Certainly not this decade, and yet it still labours on year after year. And then there's Wild At Heart. And Doc Martin. And Holby City. Each one determined to deathlessly ride out an early burst of popularity until the wheels have fallen off completely.

Perhaps the end of House will teach these shows that there's dignity in leaving people wanting more. Perhaps it won't. Either way, we don't have to hear that Massive Attack song every week any more, so that's something.

Which shows do you think are past their sell-by date and should follow House to the knackers' yard? Leave your thoughts below.